Tech Tycoons Can't Seem To Agree If New Tech Will Create Jobs Or Kill Themhttp://www.businessinsider.com/marc-andreessen-robots-not-taking-jobs-2014-6/comments
en-usWed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 -0500Fri, 09 Dec 2016 23:51:17 -0500Julie Borthttp://www.businessinsider.com/c/53a5f38369bedd913e7d67d7andrew benington Sat, 21 Jun 2014 17:05:07 -0400http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53a5f38369bedd913e7d67d7
Tech pragmatism.
I think those who have to apply intellectual complexity to reality like litigation lawyers and genuine accountants, the creatives and performers such as designers, musicians, chefs, waiters, programers, politicians, construction and skilled makers, teachers, social workers, communicators, keep their jobs.
The rest are in trouble. Because the generation of owners and decision makers who don't get tech, are starting to retire. Over the next decade tech uptake is going to create mass middle class unemployment.
Inherent in cloud and data analysis tech are horizontal structures of ownership and control. We are moving towards a horizontal economy of huge numbers of viable micro businesses that cheap sophisticated cloud hosted services and hyper tight targeted, data analysis driven, marketing enable.
A home working cloud teched local lawyer on $300 a day can charge $35-40 ph instead of the $150 now. Thats affordable. That means more lawyers who can all afford to go out for dinner so we get more restaurants, etc, etc.
Govt needs to concentrate on lowering the costs for micro businesses by getting out of the way and getting others out of the way. Fibre internet needs to be a price regulated utility, reduce costly and barrier to entry legislation, free up development land and zoning. Because this horizontal economy runs on lowering costs and requires proper work space at home, whether you're a lawyer, a custom car parts designer, or 3D printer.
I don't see any evidence that any developed government has a clue about the coming tech driven horizontal economy. All I see is fear talk about entitlements because of the expected permenant mass unemployment, and a drive to concentrate production and services in oligopolies.
Perhaps a couple of Harvard professors could take on writing up the horizontal economy and get on Bloomberg Surveillance.http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53a5baf669bedd885b7d67debob.mcintyre.7140Sat, 21 Jun 2014 13:03:50 -0400http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53a5baf669bedd885b7d67de
The employment timeline has shown a continuous migration toward the need for workers with not just an ever increasing level of intelligence but more importantly the ability to think which is sadly a skill with a far lower success rate in our current education system. Have you ever noticed that the majority of people cannot play a decent game of chess or "Clue" or "Risk", "Stratego", or even "Battleship"! These games require the ability to think in varying degrees and cannot be won by merely copying the actions of your opponent.
Most labor was physical with minimal mental and copying someone's actions was exactly how you were taught to succeed but troubleshooting and problem solving take not just years of skill development but also an innate ability that most never acquire with any measure of success.
The best that most can hope to achieve is the title of "Changineer" which is what we call a so-called "Engineer" who does not really know how to troubleshoot but merely keeps changing parts in the hopes of finding the damaged component.
The other type of troubleshooter is known as "Patches" because again they are incapable of troubleshooting and they accomplish their repairs by applying "software patches" around the entire trouble causing area rather than getting to the actual root cause.
This inability to deal with the complexities of current/future technologies is what will relegate many if not most workers to the scrap bin of employment and may well in result in a world where AI-infused robots repair robots. Companies have been conducting experiments along these lines for many,many years.http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53a5817e69beddca737d67dehuman/robot workshareSat, 21 Jun 2014 08:58:38 -0400http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53a5817e69beddca737d67de
The most crucial part of this entire topic is the ownership of production-grade robot capacity.
Humans and robots will share work on one single principle: humans will do the jobs which are still more expensive to get done by robots or which sill can not be done by robot.
Jobs which robots still can not do are limited partially by technology, and also by the increasingly available human labor, which is driving down the cost of labor and slows down the financial viability of robots.
But the trend is unmistakable and there are huge leaps in making robotics cheaper by the accumulated, fast commodified software, hardware behind robotics. Not to mention the price advantage of robotics: robots don't have human needs, that translates to hard cost for the owners of the production chain.
In the future we will also see sharp rise of technology, that aims to create self-replicating, self-improving robots on their own, using and utilizing only the most expert human involvement.
In reality, humans should not do any of the jobs that robots can do or jobs that can be automated. We just have to let the robots do it - and be happy for it. After all, isn't it the dream to free ourselves from the chores of "daily robot"?
The only reason we do it is the economic system, which provides share of the economic output by participation (either as labor or capital) in the economy.
Robotic and automation hints at a future, where most humans not only could be freed - but most likely will be forced to be freed from labor market participation.
For this reason, ownership of production-grade robot capacity will be the most important question.
It will be most likely public ownership - simply, because states will have to deal with the situation of the post human-labor economy, in which most of the population will have to receive shares of the economic output - without participating in the labor market.
This is ideologically a huge piece to swallow - it goes against all the instincts, experience, culture, politics, economics we had from the beginning of mankind.
But we never had a situation when automation, robotics freed humans from most of the chores required to maintain life.
We, as a society need to start to prepare for this biggest ever cultural, political, economic shock, as it is coming, first at a slower pace, but accelerating fast.